A longtime top staff member of U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris resigned Wednesday after The Sacramento Bee inquired about a $400,000 harassment and retaliation settlement resulting from his time working for Harris at the California Department of Justice.

Larry Wallace, who served as the director of the Division of Law Enforcement under then-Attorney General Harris, was accused by his former executive assistant in December 2016 of “gender harassment” and other demeaning behavior, including frequently asking her to crawl under his desk to change the paper in his printer.

The lawsuit was filed on Dec. 30, 2016, when Harris was still attorney general but preparing to be sworn in as California’s newly elected Democratic senator. It was settled less than five months later, in May 2017, by Xavier Becerra, who was appointed to replace her as attorney general.

By that time, Wallace had transitioned to work for Harris as a senior advisor in her Sacramento office.

“We were unaware of this issue and take accusations of harassment extremely seriously. This evening, Mr. Wallace offered his resignation to the senator and she accepted it,” Harris spokeswoman Lily Adams wrote in an email.

Harris, who has said she will decide over the holidays whether to run for president in 2020, has been a prominent figure in the #MeToo movement against workplace sexual harassment. Last year, she was among a group of female senators that were the first to call for the resignation of Sen. Al Franken after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct, and she introduced a bill in June to ban forced nondisclosure agreements in harassment settlements.